Freedom is most often discussed as if it were a generic capacity
possessed in full and equally by everyone. It is said that human beings
have "free will," as if this were some uniform power to choose present
in all people independently of any and all circumstances. The
assumption, if unqualified, is that in any given moment confronted with
two alternatives we could with ease or great effort elect either one by
just deciding to do so. The implication for morality is that everyone
could do right and avoid wrong if only she or he would in any
situation. Let us concede at once that we are more likely to magnify
freedom when we speak of our enemies. We are inclined to assume that
their wrongdoing is sheer perversity uncomplicated by circumstance and
lacking ambiguity. We more readily understand that we and those we
defend are caught up in a maelstrom of constraining conditions so acute
that our misdeeds are rendered almost innocent! We do not often make
these assumption as explicitly as I have done. Nevertheless, my
impression is that we are often unguarded in the way we speak of
freedom and at least appear to assume that people could in every case
do better or at least differently if only they would. It is perhaps
practically necessary and partly true to think this way, but the whole
truth I suspect is much more complicated than this.
By freedom in the most general sense, I mean the ability to
choose among alternatives, i. e., to enact one option rather than
another. In this broad sense, freedom is possessed by animals as well
as people. With two bowls of food before them, dogs can certainly pick
the more appealing one. The ability to decide among options, preferring
some to others, is a general power that can function at an indefinite
number of levels. In people, however, choice involves the capacity to
analyze problems, imagine and evaluate options, and after due
deliberation to choose among alternatives. Freedom in the peculiar
human sense means creative self-determination. Choice is determined by
the self in its totality as directed by its own goals, obligations,
norms, attitudes, beliefs, and values. Any particular decision
expresses the whole self as it has come to be what it is at that
moment.
This view stands between and rejects both extreme indeterminism
and extreme determinism. Extreme indeterminism denies all determination
by factors within or without the self. Every act is purely contingent,
depending on the mere arbitrary choice of the self, unconditioned by
anything, motivated, governed, and directed by nothing. The self
chooses to choose what it chooses by just choosing at the moment in
particular circumstance. Extreme determinism asserts complete
determination of every act by powers and influences that dictate
outcomes without deviation. The self has no independent or autonomous
agency but is merely the register and instrument of causes over which
it has no control. As long as these are the alternatives, determinism
will nearly always win the argument. A totally unmotivated, unguided
act makes no sense rationally and is untrue to our experience. Beyond
indeterminism and indeterminism is self-determinism. Self-determinism
rejects both the absolute necessity imposed on the self from without in
determinism and the absolute contingency of choice unguided by motives
within the self in indeterminism. The self is the cause of its own
choices and actions, indetermined externally but determined internally
by its own purposes and norms.
We need a view that neither exaggerates nor underestimates
freedom. More specifically, it is important to understand exactly what
freedom is and how choice functions in human beings. Two distinct
categories are required for understanding, but in practice they flow
into each other.
1. Normal Choice. From day to day our choices are governed by our
formed character. By character I mean the total constellation of
habits, motivations, values, aims, attitudes, beliefs, tastes,
emotional patterns, moral commitments, genetic-biological make-up, and
psychic cravings, and so on that constitute the predisposition to act
in certain ways under given circumstances. Character is formed and
reformed over a lifetime. Choice is a free act of the self as a whole
with its acquired character. A decision is both a specific act of
choice by the self as subject and at the same time an expression of a
formed character structure. Decisions are free and determined, since
freedom is nothing more or less than self-determination. Decisions have
as much predictability and consistency as our character structure
possesses over time. We cannot alter this pattern of priorities in any
given moment by just deciding to do so. What we do expresses what we
are, and we cannot fundamentally alter what we are in a moment by
merely deciding to do so. We cannot choose to hate what we love or love
what we hate by just doing it.
Self-rule functions, then, within the limits defined by the
prioritized organization of aims, norms, inhibitions, and motivations
that comprise a given person. Although the center constituted by the
dominant features of character tends to remain more or less steady
under normal circumstances, the range of permissible and mandated
alternatives may be fluid or vague or shifting, especially at the outer
margins. This latter fact may give rise to the feeling that some
choices are purely arbitrary. They seem to the decision-maker at that
moment totally uncaused, unaffected by anything other than the sheer
act of selection exercised by an autonomous free will. A deeper
analysis might reveal a situation of energetic fluctuation in the
strength of particular guiding tendencies rather than the mere absence
of any governing structure. Any specific choice both constitutes and
registers the dominant activating motive at that moment in a
dynamically organized structure that is here being called character. A
unity between the governed and the governing self is created at the
moment of decision that may or may not be identical with another
outcome under approximately the same conditions earlier or later.
Every self, then, has an operational Gestalt, an
ensemble of predispositions, passions, proclivities, and preferences
that may or may not be subservient to some sovereign aim or norm. These
master purposes, ideals, and standards that constitute character
regulate human choice and action. These overarching directing aims may
exhibit varying degrees of inconsistency, conflict, complexity,
ambiguity, and ambivalence in the decision-making process. These
guiding tendencies are dynamically arranged, and their strength in
relation to competing propensities may shift. We may not be aware of or
fully understand what actually motivates us to act as we do in some
cases. The field of forces that constitutes character functions at both
conscious and unconscious levels. The formative energies that
constitute preference and guide decision intrude into awareness in
varying degrees. Cognizance may range from the clarity of precise
self-conscious commitments to the vagueness of a barely felt urge from
the dimmer areas of comprehension beyond articulation that recede
finally into utter unconsciousness.
Free choices are simply the total self expressing itself in
action living out its own distinctive character with its distinctive
set of aims, motives, beliefs, principles, and norms. The self in
choosing is governed by character, while choice activates, confirms,
and validates character. Choice is not coerced automatically or
mechanically by character but rather is ratified and sometimes reformed
by the self-transcending self in acts of free decision. The deciding
self stands above its character with its dominant motives at the same
time that it is guided by them. Character, however, is complex and may
be made up of elements neither fully organized nor harmonized with the
whole. Hence, the presence of inner dissension or chaos may produce
erratic behavior confusing to observers as well as to the self.
Unconscious motives in conflict with rational desire may produce
neurotic complications. Unfortunately, formed character may also
contain a demonic element that operates to produce tragic results.
Decision-making involves the creation and selection of the best
means to achieve given ends. Or it may involve intentional thought to
discover the most fitting expression of our norms, obligations, and
commitments. Such choice may involve rational calculation designed to
ascertain the best way to get what we desire, do our duty, and so on.
Considerable creativity may be displayed in the process of finding the
most appropriate and effective manifestation of the self's aims, norms,
and commitments.
Choice, then, is directed by character. What we are governs what
we do. I take this to be what Jesus meant when he said that a good tree
brings forth good fruit. Hence, freedom is not a matter of making up
our minds in a finite type of creatio ex nihilo in each particular
situation as it arises. Rather we should think in terms of patterns of
behavior that express character structure contextually. A pedophile
guilty of numerous offenses does not just randomly or by chance decide
over and over again to molest a child. This kind of repetitive act does
not just happen by accident or arbitrarily. While a choice is made in
each instance, this persistent habit exhibits a deep-rooted element in
a perverted personality formation. This is why we need to speak of the
demonic as a factor that enters into decision-making in such cases. A
kind person does not capriciously decide by happenstance on each
occasion to be compassionate and gentle, as if being cruel were a real
option, but creatively lives out an acquired virtue in ways appropriate
to each new circumstance.
Our choices have a general but not absolute or static order and
predictability about them, so that if we know people well enough we can
have a pretty good idea about how they will react to particular
situations. It is this Gestalt quality about decision-making that gives
consistency to our attitudes and actions. These patterns of choice are
distinctive to each individual. At the same time the more people share
the same immediate or local culture and the same social status (race,
nationality, sex, class, education, etc.), the more they are likely to
think and act alike. Perhaps we all have a common nature marked by a
set of deep underlying tendencies and predispositions that identify us
as human beings, however much we may be molded by our cultural
inheritance and individual life histories.
Character structure from person to person will show immense
variation in detail. Any particular Gestalt may be highly complex, with
multiple conflicts, competing elements, ambivalences, and confusions.
Most of us have mixed feelings about a lot of things that complicate
our decision-making. We should think of loose congeries of tendencies,
preferences, and motivations dynamically organized around various
levels of directing norms and guiding goals. Character is not a hard
and fast, rigidly ordered system of priorities grouped in strict
hierarchical fashion. Along with dominant inclinations may be latent
proclivities, so that given different provocations, one or the other
may be elicited and reflected in choice and action. Not to be omitted
are those obsessions and compulsions that make us act repeatedly
against our better judgment in obedience to these irresistible urges.
In short, character structure may comprise varying degrees and types of
harmony and conflict.
We may act erratically, impulsively, and capriciously. Hence, an
unpredictable element always attends freedom. It feels like a certain
amount of looseness or "play," defined as "freedom of movement within a
limited space," attends our ability to choose. This is related to the
fact that the self as acting subject always stands above the self as
observed object with its character and motives. The nuances,
variations, and subtleties surrounding this aspect of freedom are
beyond simple summary or description. Nevertheless, what feels like
mere whim or arbitrary selection is not likely to violate the
overarching set of governing ends, obligations, preferences, and
passions that guides normal choice.
2. Creative Choice. Freedom also involves the capacity to create
a new Gestalt, to reorient the self around a new ensemble of motives,
values, aims, and norms. Reorganizations of character structure occur
at varying levels of importance and comprehensiveness. Radical
conversions are rare. More frequent are the minor modifications in
beliefs, values, and attitudes that most people go through over a
lifetime. Character changes may occur when, for whatever reasons, the
previously effective system becomes unsatisfactory, unworkable, or too
full of anomalies to serve the larger and deeper ends, needs, and wants
of the self. A creative transcendence of the dissatisfied self may take
place by an imaginative construction of a fresh Gestalt around a novel
organizing center of aims, preferences, and commitments. This
reconstitution of character may be experienced as a spontaneous
conversion. This is the operation of the self-transcending self at its
highest and marks the distinguishing feature of human beings in
relation to what we know or suspect about other animals. Simpler
self-transforming activities similar in some respects, however, may
occur at many levels of nature. New forms of organization have emerged,
for example, in the evolutionary process.
In human beings a self-conscious, deliberately self-directed
process is involved in creative self-transformation that presumably is
not present in analogous occurrences in the non-human world. The
creation of a new Gestalt, however, is not arbitrary or uncaused even
in this case but emerges out of the quest for the perceived highest
good relevant to the situation. It has the character, however, of a new
creation.
It is worth emphasizing that the self cannot by merely taking thought
change the actually functioning Gestalt. The most drastic
transformations occur when the operational system of motives, aims,
impulses, and commitments breaks down in the presence of promising
alternatives, prompting a creative reorganization of character by an
imaginative leap of the will. Other changes may transpire when more
attractive possibilities arise through experience and changing
circumstances. Everyone who has been liberated from some unwanted or
neurotic pattern of behavior knows that change is not easy. We do not
always understand just how it comes about. Often it feels more like a
gift than an achievement, although deliberate effort and consciously
employed techniques can help in some cases.
In summary, we are gifted with a capacity of creative
self-transcendence that enables us to alter the self-guided trajectory
of our lives. Conversion and new birth do occur. Change, however,
presupposes a set of facilitating conditions that we cannot by merely
wishing bring into existence. Transformations may occur gradually as
dissatisfaction or new insight leads to the adoption of different
norms, goals, or means. More dramatic instances of change occur when
the currently functioning configuration breaks down and is restructured
as newly attractive possibilities are imaginatively entertained and
existentially enacted. These changes, whether great or small, may be
beneficial or detrimental to self or society. Tragically, some may be
so enslaved by destructive patterns rooted in their past that positive
change may be difficult, even impossible. This is the remnant of
experiential truth in the old doctrine of predestination by which some
are damned.
We are responsible for what we do in the sense that what we
choose expresses what we are. This does not mean that in every
circumstance we could have done differently from what we did in actual
practice, though in principle and abstractly other possibilities were
open to us. In other cases, we clearly could have chosen differently.
Character guides but does not coercively dictate. The creative,
autonomous, self-transcending self does the choosing. In any case,
since we are self-determining in our actions, we are accountable for
them. A fine line may separate our being unable to choose better than
we do and our being unwilling to do so.